FIRST KISS=TUESDAY from THE CHOCOLATE CURE by Roxanne Snopek #NEWRELEASE

THE CHOCOLATE CURE, Love at the Chocolate Shop, Book 4

No more chocolate! No more meddling! No more men!

New Year’s resolutions are great. Announcing them in a crowded bar, with a chocolate martini in her hand? Not Maddie Cash’s finest moment. It’s time this new realtor got serious about her life and this time, she means it.

But when hospital volunteering lands her at the bedside of bruised and battered Mick Meyer, who has no knowledge of Maddie’s reputation – and no memory of the kiss he begged from her during that long, pain-filled night, her best-laid plans are put in jeopardy. It’s not just his sweet tooth that’s tempting her.

The hunky bush pilot with the concussion has an old family property to unload. Making this sale could be Maddie’s professional salvation. But when Mick turns on the charm, she’s in danger of forgetting all her best intentions… on chocolate… on meddling… and especially on men.

He’d already seen the world and he was nowhere near broke. But he’d gladly spend his last dime to show it to Maddie.

It felt like the world outside his room, outside this little cubicle in which his bed and Maddie’s chair sat, had receded to some other dimension. This was a space outside of ordinary time, suspended and removed like a picture cut from a photo album.

The two of them strangers, yet thrown together for these few hours, so momentous for Mick in his pain and, yes, he’d admit it, his fear.

What was it for Maddie? Just another evening spent at the bedside of a needy hospital patient?

He understood how concussions worked. Tomorrow, he could wake up – assuming he was eventually allowed to sleep – with no recollection of this conversation, or the touch of her magic hands. Or their gentle flirting, the ease with which they joked about their lives.

He lifted his hand and grasped her wrist, lightly. She stilled. Their eyes met, hers wide and dark, questioning but unalarmed.

“Mick?”

Perhaps he’d be left with a fleeting, dream-like vision of a woman with soft hands and a kind voice. An angel.

Or perhaps he’d see her again and she’d be a complete stranger to him.

“Kiss me?” he whispered.

“Mick.” She pulled her hand, but he didn’t let it go.

“I know it’s not real, Maddie,” he said. “In an hour or two you’ll go home.”

“And come morning, you’ll probably forget we ever met.”

Understanding filled her dark eyes, warm and sad.

“I don’t want to forget you, Maddie.”

“But you will. And it’s okay.”

“So, kiss me. Maybe I won’t.”

She smiled at him, so sweetly he could already taste her lips on his.

Strawberries? Chocolate? Pancakes and syrup? He had to know.

But she touched a finger to his lips.

“Like you said, this isn’t real. It’s adrenalin and pain and endorphins and whatever they’re pumping into you through that IV drip.”

“Right now, it’s real.”

She leaned closer.

“I’m eighty percent certain that this isn’t allowed. Maybe ninety.”

“Do it for me.”

She bent forward, very slowly, keeping her gaze on his, holding his hand. He inhaled a trace of something light and flowery, lotion perhaps. Or her shampoo. It smelled… purple. Like lilac.

Remember this. Keep this.

Light shone behind her head, renewing the halo he’d seen earlier. A lock of golden hair slipped free of the pins, fell over her shoulder and brushed against his cheek. Her neck was fragrant as a garden warmed by the sun.

Lilac, spring breeze, sunshine.

Ever so lightly, like the first touch of floats on a glassy lake, she pressed her hands to his face, her lips to his.

And then they were gone, leaving a cool spot on his skin.

He tucked the memories into his brain, like petals in a book, even knowing the book would get filed away in a locked library, the key to which lay beneath the frozen surface of a lost lake.

Hold on. Hold this.

Lilacs. Sunshine. Love.

“I have to go,” she whispered.

“No.”

“By tomorrow, you’ll have forgotten all about me.”

Hold on.

Footsteps approached. Another voice. The rattle of wheels and metal.

“You will forget.” Maddie put her face next to his ear. Her breath warmed his cheek. “But I won’t.”